As David Leffman observes in A Murder in Yunnan, the southwesterly province’s role in the grand story of China is often relegated to small player status. A largely independent kingdom for much of its history, even after Yunnan’s incorporation into the Celestial Empire in the 13th century, the province remained cut off from the rest of China until the late 20th century by a string of snow-ridged mountains. The further west one traveled, writes Leffman, “the less ‘Chinese’ the landscape and people became.” He should know. Leffman first visited China in 1985, and co-authored several China guidebooks over four decades of travel and exploration. As any travel writer will testify, Chinese history books might marginalize Yunnan, but the Southwest, with its wild topography and tapestry of ethnic groups, is invariably the meatiest chapter of a guidebook. 

– Thomas Bird, China Books Review